Imagining a female with the power to penetrate sounds stupid – perverted and hardly wise – and Abida Parveen would agree, after all, “There is fun in being stupid…why should we say we are wise when there is no fun in it?”

Abida Parveen is definitely not a part of a Torontonian’s daily doze of commodities but the veil signified in her name and her work with the nonsensical should tempt you into looking through: think of her as Allison Hinds dressed in a Shalwar Kameez. Parveen was born a female in 1954 in the Pakistani province of Sindh, a space renowned for its Islamic mysticism and stifled discourse on females.  Parveen did grow some balls when she realized the penetrative powers of her voice. She can be read as an interesting chapter on females penetrating males and though her process may be self-centered and not entirely convincing, she is an alternative non-white, non-western example of female movement. In a society that used condemnation as a source of protection, Parveen took a bold step by not letting the shame control her. Instead, she ventured out “shameless” thereby exposing what was truly shameless in the society around her.

Before analyzing Praveen’s penetration through patriarchy, we need to venture into her backyard to dig up the backstage struggle she has endured. Parveen is a celebrated singer of the Qawwali, a devotional discourse of the Sufi tradition of Islam. Islam has approximately 72 sects and Sufism borrows from many of these in establishing a path to God, Tariqat, for the human being, Salik. Sufism was a movement encouraged by Islamic thinkers who felt disoriented with worship, Ibadaat, with the goal of eventually dying and achieving a materialistic ideal of paradise, Jannat. There was a thirst for a direct union with God and thus unlike other dominant sects, Sufism does not emphasize mandatory acts of worship, Wajibat, but instead looks to create a personal rapport, beyond the copybook of reason, for the human with God. In the words of an eleventh century Sufi preacher, Abu Said, the desire of feeling the love of God begins when one takes a single step, “…the step out of yourself”. This step is also what moved the work of the famous poet Rumi.

Sufism streams from the works of  saints such as Lal Shabaz Qalandar, each of whom have served as guides, Murshids, in mapping their followers’, Mureeds, path. Sufism has numerous variations and each Murshid prepares a drink at “his” tavern, precisely the bar at which we meet Sufism’s dilemma with females and Parveen’s peaceful, penetrative approach to this gender/genital panic. Although Sufism is a path that excludes none, the female has continued to live behind the scenes and it is in the Qawwali that Parveen troubles this condition.

Sufism has developed the Qawwali as a spiritual narrative with intense lyrics, Sufiyana Kalaaams, intended to create an ambiance, Sama’, for the devotee to achieve a state of ecstasy, Kefiat, to focus on God.  This performance has remained male dominated with a group of males exercising their vocals to the narratives. Female participation has always pinched the Sufi space and spiritual leaders, Sheikhs, have hesitated to bestow upon females the role of the performer, Qawwal. Parveen grew up in such a space and her father, Ustad Ghulam Haider, was a renowned performer.  Given this entrapment it is worth examining how Parveen worked within a non-female zone, a society of “keys and locks” to unlock the various doors placed ahead of a female.

Praveen’s journey into the Qawwali commenced as soon as she began to defy “nature”. Mimicking her father’s shadow she exhibited a stubbornness to resist and accompanied him to his performances. Her father performed at shrines and spiritual seatings, Majlis, and her attendance marked a polite knock on the closed doors of opportunity. Her father recognized her passion and allowed her to submerge herself in the thoughts, Khayal, of the lyrics. She displayed an arrogance to pursue her path and though the Qawalli remained confined to males she ventured undeterred and eventually penetrated through the male zone, using her voice to hunt the males down into listening. Far from being locked by culture she worked within it in a shameless process of reclamation to ensure that her voice was respected. Parveen later married a male producer from Radio Pakistan – no surprises there – and she now has a global audience that is eager to intoxicate their senses, Haal, with her works. Incredibly, religious sects, consistently welcome her to perform at annual celebrations, Urs. She is a regular speaker at Universities and now commands a power over the male, performing with a male choir, Sangaat, that breathe her air.

To any female, Parveen’s process is an example of how one can remain within a culture and not flee it because of questioning or simply being, “…you gather from mobility, you see, this universe is for us to learn, you can even learn from a stone.” Females must break free from a double-consciousness because if they are to retreat into invisibility we would hear echoes of Gautam Malkani’s construction of the character Samira Ahmed in Londonstani. Can you imagine life as a performance of two conflicting scripts?  Accepting one’s own body is thus the primary step before one steps into the public space to be a realized body.

Such politics resonates in Torontonian “Muslim Refusenick”, Irshad Manji who too  grabbed the system by the balls. Though she lives under the threat of the bullet, she has chosen to bite it to the bitter end. Just like Manji, Parveen did not flee from the troubles ahead of her and she worked within a system, causing it to change. Salaam, a Muslim queer community in Toronto has set the ball rolling on an identical process and they have confronted tradition by voicing their existence. Such a process is healthy and academic Fawzia Khan explains working for change within one’s system as necessary for females to reclaim the social world they find themselves in.

With the world’s space coalescing ever so quickly, there is no space of safety for females other than where they find themselves: females must make their safety from their danger. Parveen’s achievements have come in an extremely volatile space and it stands as an emblem for the power located within females. Brute force does not penetrate to change and for female penetration to be productive, the movement must be calculated and concise, just as Parveen’s. Her approach has pinched Muslim spaces and her phenomenal performances with the lyrics of Baba Bulley Shah have brought attention to the life of a saint who was once stupid. Interestingly his shrine in Kasur, Pakistan, is one of the only sites at which transsexuals, Hijras, perform devotional dances, Dhamaal, without any restrictions. Such confrontation rewrites a culture and Parveen’s stance as a soft, Sufi soldier brings her to make statements that penetrate beyond belief, “ Male and female does not even come into it…in the Sufi’s terminology, if someone is not male, he is called a female.”

Neither does Parveen run away from her roots nor does she nourish blindly. Instead she works within it, in a give and take relationship that helps preserve identities as well formulate new ones.

Praveen forgets that her song is being glossed over by the exotic and being pushed into a specific sphere: not too many people know of Parveen and as depictions of Islam continue to fit negative stereotypes, her work with it may not extend beyond her own benefit. Parveen’s process may only have moved a stone away from her path but for the other Muslim females the stones remain. It could be that Parveen’s process has a short-term power, a power to let only her own identity flourish. Perhaps this is why, she often sings of a reunion with Bulley Shah , “…where everyone is blind.”

Nonetheless, at least in Parveen we see the sense in stupidity and now we must confront the irrationality of a rational Toronto. Females of Toronto, work with Toronto and penetrate it : ROLL IT GYAL!

Author: Ali Abbas